Originally Posted by BadoRas

Thank you.

As of right now, there are 7 First seats unoccupied on EK003 on 1st October. Seats 1E, 1F, 2E, 2F, 3K, 4A and 4K

With the full cabin on 26/9 there is a very small chance that some of the passengers in F seats may change flights, releasing their seats for people in your situation, but it is rare so close to the departure date. And you would really need to proactively secure one of them by calling CS incessantly, with low chance of success unless you're platinum or iO and at the head of the queue for upgrade.

After the covid lockdowns, the bouyant purchasing of F seats has meant that EK knows it has a good chance of filling every F seat with paying passengers and is mostly not interested in keeping any seats for those wanting F awards or F upgrades. I can certainly see their point of view. Cash is everything!

I have had 3 F trips to Africa since the beginning of this year and each time I have noticed that I need to book a lot earlier for there to be any spare F seats on my chosen days, let alone secure my preferred seats! My flights out of Australia rarely have any spare F seats at all. If there are any, they are quickly snapped up by on-board upgraders. I imagine you would have the same scenario on your LHR-DXB-LHR flights. A popular route, apparently with lots of higher status passengers!

I do wish you good luck!